T said: 'I think you are overstating it .. regarding her words. She was conflating the propaganda narrative and military perspective imo. Her view is not worth the bother to analyse it. She is simply wrong and shallow.' - actually I think she's basically right, if you watch the whole clip (the tweet only covers a small part), especially about the ineffectiveness of international law and in rejecting the statement that 'power is truth':

'Strength lies in the quantity and quality of missiles, strength lies in the quantity and quality of drones, strength lies in the quantity and quality of reconnaissance, and whether you are right or wrong in this case, absolutely no one cares, and this is very sad. We have to draw sad conclusions from this. Sad, but necessary.'

(Reminiscent of the old french saying that 'God is usually for the big squadrons against the small ones'.) Of course there are other kinds of strength, and moral force is not without its own power, but when it comes to geopolitics that stuff is basically meaningless. The likes of Ritter and even Finkelstein put their faith in the law, but anyone can see, especially now, that it's not consistently applied, and in fact used as a tool to further the aims of the powerful ("You guys play by the rules; we'll do as we please.") The issue I have is that just because this sociopathic logic applies on the level of the nation state, does that mean we have to accept it as a general principle? Or if we refuse to identify with king & country does that allow us to still resolve our differences as human beings?

'As far as anarchist system protecting large populace, do give me an example of where this has worked. Consider Russia? Or Iran?' - well, that's rather the point I was making: threats to your life made using state-level military force basically ensure that the only means of survival are either capitulation, running away or responding with your own (or somebody else's) state-level military force. It goes back to Schmookler's 'Parable of the Tribes'*, and you can see it happening in those who are urging Iran to double down on its aggression and begin to act similarly to the way that israel has been acting. Me saying that it makes sense for Iran to acquire
nuclear weapons is part of the same logic: even if motivated by a desire to avert the suffering of ordinary people living in Iran, the effect is an increase in extreme state-level militarism, which is never going to end well.

Wish I had a better solution to advocate for...

cheers,
I

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* - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andrew-bard-schmookler-the-parable-of-the-tribes#toc12

The Selection for Power: The Parable of the Tribes

The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.[5]

The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization’s development.